Summer's Night
by apple psyche
Summary: Spoiler warning for the fifth & final season. Bakura vignette: that's what childhood trauma does to you.


**Author's Note: **I would like to let y'all know, that this was written before I had seen the end of Yu-Gi-Oh. Therefore, explaining all the errors. When I wrote this I had only _read_ _about _what happened in the end and even then what I'd read was about the 4kids dub (unbeknowsnt to me at the time). I am now aware that Zorc actually came before Yami Bakura, not the other way around. I'm thinking of re-writing this but in the meantime you'll unfortunately have to consider it a 4kids based fic. _March 29, 2009_

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Ryou flicked through the TV channels with the remote: soap, soap, tennis, soap, B-grade movie, soap, ads. This was Sunday daytime television. For once in his life he wished he could believe in The Heart Of The Remote. He figured if the remote did have a heart, it was probably the red button up the top, and therefore turned the TV off with it. He sat on the sofa staring blankly at the TV.

It was days like this he had to distract himself, so as not to think too much. He was alone. Truly alone. Peacefully alone. His dad was away, his friends were absent, and the shadows…

It wasn't as if he had lost anything when the spirit had gone. If anything he had been _rid_ of something; something that didn't belong where it was.

But he couldn't stop thinking.

Obviously they had had to put a stop to him, and there had been no other resolution. They weren't just supposed to let him take over the world. And his power was so overwhelming; it was the accumulation of three _thousand_ years of being trapped with nothing to feed on but his own spite, anger, jealousy and hatred.

And why wouldn't anyone feel that way? He had been so young when it happened, just a small child. He had witnessed the slaughter of not only his own family, but also his whole village. He had been the sole survivor. It's not as if he'd had anyone to say, "Hey kid, forget all this nonsense about Zorc and thievery. It's not healthy for you. Go get cleaned up. There'll be other people._ You'll be okay._"

He hadn't had anyone to look after him. He'd had to learn and fend for himself. His background had been criminals, lowlifes and the like, what do you expect? And he'd never had anyone to love him. Besides the parental kind that had been cut short, _the boy had never had any real love_.

He had been in his own Hell for 3000 years. 3000 years of torture and torment. And at the end of it all they say, "You're evil. PURE EVIL!"

Zorc may have been what he was, but the Thief King had his reasons. Although he _had_been the same spirit that had tried to take over Ryou's body and maim his soul, and Ryou only being a kid himself. But it was just impossibly unfair. It wasn't a Happily Ever After, maybe for everyone else it was, but not for him. He'd hardly even had a happy beginning.

It was so depressing, so heart wrenchingly horrid that it made you want to _count_ to 3000 instead of just saying '3000 years' and it still wouldn't be anywhere near enough. It made you want to go back and hug the boy, tell him where to go and what to do, say that everything would be okay and sorted out with time. It made you want to tell the good guys that they didn't truly _know_.

And there was nothing that could be done. Nothing that could have been done. Nothing was all there was for the soul that had been darkened and shadowed with nothing but torture for all his life and beyond.

Ryou was starting to feel dizzy and sick. He slowly arose from the sofa and walked into the kitchen to make some tea.

He would see his friends again, for many times to come. In the autumn school would return. Things continued. Life went on.

He returned to the sofa with his tea and a book to settle down with. Outside, the birds whistled, the sun was high in the sky, and people went about their daily business.

That night as Ryou slept huddled up in bed, the storm clouds drifted in. And high above the city, demonic, childish, and somewhere beyond madness, a faint laughter rolled with the thunder. No one heard. So it danced with shadows on rooftops.


End file.
